Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Inconsistent gasoline prices.

Last Saturday we drove to Winnipeg and back. Starting out I filled up with gas at a station in Shoal Lake Manitoba not far from us. The price was 76.9. I thought that I probably should have waited until Neepawa where gas is usually cheaper. But when we got there gas at 81.9 a liter. The next town over the price was just under 80 cents a liter. When we got to Winnipeg there was the biggest shock of all. Gas at all city stations we observed was 83.9. Outside the perimeter there were a couple of stations a cent or two less.
It is hard to understand the rationality if there is any in this pattern of pricing except that within a town everyone seems to charge the same although even this is not always the case.
Although the prices are a great relief from last summer, they still do not seem to reflect the drop in oil prices. I expect that the margin of refiners has gone up substantially. When prices of oil were very high I gather that refiners were barely scraping by! They are probably making up for that now and then some.

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